One particular concern in all systems that dispense postage, such as a postage meter, is that an accurate accounting be made of all postage dispensed. This accounting is required by law and, typically, is accomplished by well known accounting registers within the postage dispensing system. These registers may have the form of ascending and descending registers. Typically, the ascending register is incremented by a value representative of the total value of the postage dispensed while the descending register is simultaneously decremented by the value of postage dispensed. At any given time in the operation of the system, the values of the ascending and descending registers must reflect the total amount of postage provided. In order to provide an initial amount of postage funds to the system, the descending register is charged with a value amount which represents the amount of postage funds which will be dispensed, while the ascending register is reset to a zero funds condition. Typically, if for any reason a component of the postage dispensing system becomes inoperative, the further dispensing of postage is prohibited until the entire system is once more operable.
The evolution of mailing systems has resulted in the need for a mail management system which provides for the centralized control over one or more postage dispensing devices in such a way that the activity of the devices may be monitored and recorded by a host system. In this way, an accounting may be made of the activity of all of the postage dispensing devices which are coupled to the host. This centralized control leads to increased efficiencies and accounting reliability in the overall operation of a mailroom. As an example, in a large organization such as a corporation the mailroom will typically perform mailing services for a variety of different clients, such as departments, within the organization. Individual clients may be the marketing department, the product department, the legal department and other diverse interorganization departments. In order that each department may be accurately charged for the services performed by the mailroom it is desirable to generate a report which allocates, on a department by department basis, the postage expenditure and the value of services performed by the mailroom which are related to mailing functions.
In other organizations the mailroom may be a primary service provided by the organization, the organization typically processing and mailing material for a number of different clients. In this type of organization, it is essential that the postage dispensed and the services related to the dispensing of this postage be allocated on a client-by-client basis in order that each client may be correctly invoiced for the postage expended and the services rendered. Thus, it can be realized that in any type of organization having a mailroom that it is important that the mailroom be capable of uniquely identifying each client so that each client may be correctly invoiced.
As can be appreciated, in a large mailroom many thousands of pieces of mail may be processed during the course of a given day. Some of this mail may be required to be mailed on or before a given date in order to have value to the client or to the addressee. If for any reason the mailroom were to become inoperative for a period of time the mailing of these pieces of mail may be delayed such that the mail may lose its timed value. This is understandably an undesirable situation.
As has been previously discussed, it is also essential that the postage value of each piece of mail processed by accurately accounted for to prevent the fraudulent or the inadvertent dispensing of postage. In order to prevent the fraudulent or inadvertent dispensing of postage the mailroom may require that an operator enter a client account code or number which is transmitted from, for example, an operator workstation to a host system for validation. After validating the account code, the host may thereafter transmit a postage dispensing enabling signal to the workstation to dispense the required amount of postage. As can be appreciated, if the host system were inoperative the account validation may not occur, resulting in the inability of the workstation to enable an attached postage dispensing device to dispense postage.